History Matters Podcast: Susana Miranda on Portuguese Women in Toronto’s Cleaning Industry, 1970-1990

Last Thursday, historian Susana Miranda gave a talk called “Keeping the City Clean: Portuguese Women in Toronto’s Cleaning Industry, 1970-1990”  at the Bloor/Gladstone branch of the Toronto Public Library.   The lecture is part of the Toronto Public Library’s History Matters series.

As you can see in the image to the left, she started her presentation with a shot of the downtown office towers that grew to dominate the Toronto skyline by the late 1960s.  Miranda proceeded to examine the labour struggles of the women who cleaned these skyscrapers and other buildings across the growing metropolis.

Her talk is available here for audio download.  The lecture is based on research for Miranda’s PhD dissertation, completed earlier this year.

The last of this year’s History Matters talks takes place tomorrow, November 4th, when Megan Davies and David Reville present “Locating Parkdale’s Mad History: Back Wards to Back Streets, 1980-2010” at Toronto’s Parkdale library.    Click here for more details.

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